


in the middle of the night (when the wolves come out)

by missgiven



Series: butch aziraphale rights [2]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (she punches people), Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Aziraphale is a butch lesbian okay? okay, Butch/Femme, Crowley is a beautiful femme, F/F, Homophobic Language, Ineffable Wives (Good Omens), Period-Typical Homophobia, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-21 13:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20694305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missgiven/pseuds/missgiven
Summary: While walking home from a lovely time out a night club in the '50s, some men have a few things to say about Crowley and Aziraphale and their respective presentations.Aziraphale answers back with utmost decorum*.*kicking the snot out of them--AU where Aziraphale and Crowley tend to present as women. The 1950s and butch/femme culture are to lady!Aziraphale as the Victorian period and discreet gentlemen's clubs are to man!Aziraphale.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rennish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rennish/gifts).

> Listen, so my wife, I have this wife, we were talking about lady!Aziraphale and Crowley the other day (or like, every day). And she was like, okay: Aziraphale presents “gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide” (Gaiman and Pratchett, 142). So if Aziraphale is [presenting as] a woman who needs to present _that gay_, how does she present? As a _butch_!
> 
> Which. Is true!!! Can you deal with how true that is?? _I can’t_. 
> 
> Anyway, I goaded this wife of mine into drawing me this butch Aziraphale, and she drew this absolutely stunning sketch of 50s couple butch/femme Aziraphale/Crowley. And I told her if she drew them I’d write her a little baby fic, so I did.
> 
> Thanks to my wren. This is for you. :)

**London, 1950s**  
****

Crowley finished the last of her Aviation and sat back in her seat, inadvertently pressing her back into Aziraphale’s arm. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to feel for the music and chatter that enveloped her in the nightclub. Slowly, she became aware of the ways the noise prickled and poked at her consciousness. She hadn’t allowed it to bother her earlier, happy to have a nice evening out with Aziraphale, but as the night wore on she felt her defenses dipping down. She opened her eyes again and found Aziraphale looking at her gravely. Aziraphale, who looked so handsome in her three-piece suit, short hair a mess as always but somehow dashing despite (because of?) that.

Crowley smiled, soft and unhurried. She was beginning to feel quite done with the evening _out_, but not yet done with Aziraphale.

“Take me home, angel?” she asked, looking up at Aziraphale with a gentle grin on her face.

“To your flat, you mean?” Aziraphale clarified.

“No, I meant the bookshop, of course.”

Aziraphale kept looking at her with that same cool look on her face for a moment before she (finally!) smiled back. Smirked, rather. “I’ll take you home, dear.”

Crowley suddenly realized her mistake, and blushed awfully. 

Aziraphale twitched the fingers of the arm she had stretched behind Crowley, brushing them against the silk covering Crowley’s back. All Crowley could manage to do was stare at Aziraphale and feel grateful for the dark lenses in the cat-eye glasses she wore.

Aziraphale must have taken pity on Crowley, so she only let Crowley squirm for another few seconds. Then she stood and offered her arm.

“You don’t need to do that,” Crowley said peevishly as she took Aziraphale’s arm anyhow. She had just about tamped down the last of her blush.

“But what kind of butch would I be if I don’t care for the lovely young woman at my side?” Aziraphale said, leading Crowley to the door.

Crowley blushed _again. Damn _it.

“Aziraphale,” she hissed. “You stop that, now!”

“My apologies, my dear,” Aziraphale said, quite insincerely. The smirk had not yet left her face.

Crowley scowled her way out of the club on Aziraphale’s arm, her black dress swishing around her knees.

Several blocks later, they had moved on from _that _challenging moment and onto the relatively safer topic of a symphony they’d each attended (independently of one another) several months prior. They were just a few blocks to Aziraphale’s bookshop when they turned a corner and saw two men standing further down the sidewalk they were walking on. 

Crowley didn’t think anything of it, but Aziraphale visibly straightened her shoulders and puffed out her chest. She tucked Crowley’s hand more firmly into her elbow and patted it a little.

The men must have noticed them, for when Crowley and Aziraphale came closer, the shorter of the two called out, “How’s it going there, luv!”

Crowley shot a glare his way from behind her sunglasses. He may not have been able to see her eyes, but she got the message across all the same.

"Aw, don’t ignore him, miss,” said the taller man.

Another catcall, another glare.

“She’ll do as she likes, thanks,” Aziraphale said pleasantly enough.

“What, are you too wrapped up in that dyke of yours,” said the shorter one as they passed, still clearly addressing Crowley. Her whole body tensed up in anger. For a moment, she couldn’t think, overwhelmed by the shockwaves of surprise and rage washing over her.

They’d only made it a couple steps past them when the other one said, “You bloody queers. I ought to take you home, show you how a real man does it, fix you up.”

“Right,” Aziraphale said, spinning them around and tucking Crowley behind her in a tidy maneuver. “That’s enough, gentlemen. My companion has made her desires quite clear — “

“She hasn’t said anything; you’ve been talking for her,” one of the men interrupted. Crowley was too far gone in anger and something that felt strangely like shame to care which one. “How do you know — ”

“I know because I am wise enough to read the implicit _no _in a lady’s silence,” Aziraphale interrupted back, snappishly. 

The sentence didn’t seem difficult to understand to Crowley, but the men seemed to struggle to parse it, which only made them angrier. 

“Ruddy dyke,” said one of the men, taking a threatening step towards Aziraphale, who held up one hand. It worked to stop the man’s advance for a moment.

“Gentlemen, I am in a charitable mood. I won't even insist that you apologize to my companion, though she dearly deserves it. Simply allow us to walk on without troubling us further.”

Crowley reclaimed at least part of herself in that moment, and she began frantically hissing in Aziraphale’s ear. “Angel, what are you doing, just miracle us out of here and go, why are you goading them — ”

“Like hell, you fucking queer,” said the man closest to Aziraphale, and lunged at her.

Crowley shrieked uselessly behind Aziraphale, who blocked the punch easily.

“Was afraid it might come to this,” Aziraphale grunted, and socked the man in the jaw. 

Crowley felt like she should be doing something to ameliorate the situation, but she was so overcome by the sight of Aziraphale decking a man in the face for her sake that all she could do was stare.

While the first man was rubbing at his jaw and swearing, the other one came up, fist raised.

“My dear boy, must you?” Aziraphale said, even as she neatly dodged his punch. She gave him a chance to right himself, but when he did so, it was to lunge at Aziraphale again. 

She sighed and used the momentum of his movement to somehow throw him on the ground. She moved so fast Crowley could hardly tell how. 

By this point, the other man had recovered, but Aziraphale hadn’t seen. She was faced the other way, looking after his friend she had thrown.

Crowley yelped, “behind you!” but too late — the man shoved Aziraphale in the back, hard, and nearly set her sprawling. She righted herself just in time. When she turned around to face her attacker, her blue eyes were blazing. Crowley shivered.

Aziraphale grabbed the man’s lapels, shoved him up against the wall of the building, and leaned in close.

Crowley took a breathless step closer just in time to hear Aziraphale say in a low, frightening sort of voice: “Bad show, I’m afraid,” and bash the man’s head into the wall.

Crowley’s jaw dropped.

“Angel?” she asked, but Aziraphale had no time for her. Even as the man she’d been threatening crumpled to the ground, unconscious (_not dead!_ Crowley thought hard at the limp body), the other man came rushing back at her.

Aziraphale grabbed the man’s punch out of the air and twisted his arm behind his back roughly and grabbed at his other arm, pinning it to his side.

“Lay off, you faggot, or I’ll call the police, I will,” the man panted into the night.

Aziraphale shoved his arm further up his back. From the look on the man’s face, it was quite unpleasant.

“I don’t believe you will,” Aziraphale said calmly, just barely out of breath. “Do you care to hear what I expect to happen?”

“Dyke!” The man tried to wriggle out of her firm grasp, but it just looked like he managed to hurt himself worse.

“Since you asked so kindly,” Aziraphale continued, “I expect that I will walk you over to that kind lady over there, to whom you will apologize. Then, if you are very good, I will let you go to tend to your friend, and you will let us go with no further trouble. If you do not do as I expect, I will be forced to be sure you join your friend in a state of unconsciousness, and then, when you do wake, deep regret. Is this all _perfectly _clear?”

The man looked for a moment like he was thinking of testing Aziraphale. Mercifully, he did not.

“Yeah,” he muttered.

Aziraphale walked him slightly closer to Crowley, keeping a good six feet in between them. “Apologize,” she said, her voice as stern as Crowley had ever heard it.

“Sorry, miss,” the man mumbled.

Crowley couldn’t resist lowering her glasses to give him a _really good _glare. “Don’t call my friend a dyke again,” she told him, venom seeping into her tone. “Actually, maybe stop bothering women like my friend _at all._”

The man grunted, keeping his eyes on the pavement. 

“Now I’ll let you go, and you be a good boy and go take care of your friend, all right?” Aziraphale reminded him. 

He nodded petulantly. Aziraphale shoved him away from her, then straightened her suit jacket and stalked over to Crowley. Offered her arm again.

“Shall we, my dear?” she asked.

Crowley blinked at her.

“You just,” she said. She couldn’t quite manage the sentence, although she tried several times. She felt very, very impressed, and perhaps a little aroused.

“That’s true, dear,” Aziraphale said, smiling. She waved her elbow in Crowley’s direction again, and Crowley took it this time. Aziraphale led them down the street.

“S’pose I could have helped,” Crowley said a few steps later. 

“I shouldn’t have liked you to,” Aziraphale said.

Before Crowley could respond or even think about that, she heard quick footsteps behind them. She turned to see the man Aziraphale hadn’t knocked out rushing at them.

“Aziraphale!” she shrieked.

“Pardon me, my dear,” Aziraphale said, squeezing Crowley’s arm before she let go. She grabbed the man rushing at her by the shoulders, turned them around to use up his momentum, then landed him a solid punch in the face that left him moaning on the ground. Aziraphale gazed down at him with a look of intense loathing, then gave him a final hard, swift kick in the stomach.

Crowley was stood where Aziraphale had left her, shocked.

“I think they’ve had enough, now,” Aziraphale said, shaking out her right hand. She tugged at the cuffs of her suit, straightened her tie. “Come along, then.” She held her hand out to Crowley.

Crowley walked to her a bit shakily. There was a lot of very human adrenaline rushing around her body. Potentially other hormones too. It was difficult to quantify. She took Aziraphale’s outstretched hand, and Aziraphale tucked her hand into her elbow, leading them off again. 

“I do hope that didn’t disturb you, darling,” Aziraphale said. As if upsetting Crowley were chief among her concerns!

“Demon,” she reminded Aziraphale faintly.

“Still, you don’t often see me like that.”

“Angel, you don’t often _get _like that!”

Aziraphale grinned. “Men don’t often threaten my girl in front of me.”

“Your - gir - _Aziraphale_!” Crowley felt herself blushing _again_, for Satan’s sake.

“Are you not?” Aziraphale looked up at her, out of the corner of her eyes. “Whatever we are to each other, dear, are you not my girl?”

Crowley spluttered for a few moments before she realized she had absolutely nothing to say to that whatsoever. They walked in silence for a little while.

“I can’t believe you _fought for my honor_,” she said once the bookshop came into view. “I can’t believe I didn’t _stop you. _Or _help you. _Really, angel, I should have defended _your _honor. I couldn’t believe the names they called you! Horrible men, really — ”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, relinquishing her arm so Aziraphale could lace her arm around Crowley’s waist, “This form I take comes with certain obligations. Obligations I feel honored to fulfill, by the way.”

“I just think it must have been _somewhat _sinful to punch the lights out of two men, Aziraphale, even if they were being wankers.” Crowley looped her arm over Aziraphale’s shoulders. “More my department.”

“I was meting out Heavenly justice,” Aziraphale said primly. 

Crowley hmm’d. 

“And anyhow, no one should speak to you like that. Least of all when you’re out with me. Of course I fought them for your sake.”

Crowley felt quite warm in the pit of her stomach at that.

They came up to the bookshop at last. The lock turned for Aziraphale obligingly, and she opened the door for Crowley. 

“Here we are, my dear.”

Crowley gave Aziraphale’s cheek a little kiss as she swept into the bookshop.

This time, Aziraphale blushed.


	2. The Art

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> Firstly to anyone who has commented on this: aaaAAAHH thank you SO MUCH for taking the time to do so! Please know I read every comment, multiple times, and I'm so grateful for each one. I am in grad school and the semester she is tough and it's so lovely to read your kind words! My anxiety is a terrible goblin who makes it hard to respond individually, especially when bogged down mid-semester, but I do read and cherish them. Thank you thank you thank you!!!
> 
> Here is the sketch my wife did that started this whole thing off. Please tell her how cute it is!!!!!

Aziraphale and Crowley in this AU where they present mostly as ladies.

They (particularly Aziraphale) go hard for the 1950s and butch/femme culture.

Here they are having a lovely time out at a night club. Crowley is about to ask Aziraphale to take her home to the bookshop.


End file.
